By Keith Coffman and Jonathan Allen
(Reuters) – The convicted gunman who killed five people in a 2022 attack at a gay nightclub in Colorado is expected to plead guilty to federal hate crime and weapons charges at a hearing on Tuesday and be sentenced to life in prison without the possibility of life imprisonment. parole.
Anderson Lee Aldrich, 24, was already sentenced to life in prison after pleading guilty to state murder charges in a separate case last year for the Club Q attack in Colorado Springs.
Aldrich later agreed to plead guilty to 74 federal charges, court records show, for planning and executing the attack at the club after entering armed with a semiautomatic rifle on Nov. 19, 2022, during a drag show. Five people were killed and more than a dozen were injured before two club patrons were able to wrestle the gun away from Aldrich.
After pleading, Aldrich will be sentenced by Judge Charlotte Sweeney at the same hearing in U.S. District Court in Denver.
Aldrich’s attorneys and prosecutors from the U.S. attorney’s office in Denver agreed that federal sentencing guidelines call for multiple concurrent sentences of life in prison without the possibility of parole and a consecutive sentence of 190 years in prison.
The most serious crimes Aldrich must plead guilty to are charges of intentionally killing someone because of their sexual orientation or gender identity.
(Reporting by Keith Coffman in Denver and Jonathan Allen in New York; Editing by Donna Bryson and Rosalba O’Brien)
